


the stain of your eyes, the tint of your scars

by redqueenequilibrium



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Developing Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 11:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5783485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redqueenequilibrium/pseuds/redqueenequilibrium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say to see in colour is a brilliant thing, made all the greater when you get to experience its splendor for the first time with the one who will be Perfect For You.  A soulmate changes the world as you know it - from the day they meet you to the day they leave you - and to have one... well...  it's a special thing.</p><p>Felix has never seen in colour - never needed to, never particularly wanted to - and the universal obsession with finding The One is annoying enough to make him resent it.  It's a good thing Locus has never brought the topic up - seems just as uninterested in the whole idea - otherwise their working partnership wouldn't run as smooth as it does...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Research shows that in times of conflict, fewer people see in colour.

This has never been more true than during the span of the War with the Covenant.

Felix has never seen in colour.

He’s never expected to.

Never considered it important to.

When billions face death every day, dragged into the conflict, ravaged by alien forces, stuck on colonies unfortunate enough to be targeted for invasion, conquered, or eradicated entirely, it’s so hard to devote what precious little time one has left to searching for the elusive one-of-some-billion for the sake of what seems to be a near-unattainable ideal of true love.

Who has time to wait and seek that ‘special someone’ when you’re being shot at and every day could be your last?

No, time was better spent learning to fight, to shoot, to survive, better spent doing what was needed to ensure humanity had another day, better spent keeping yourself alive enough to experience what little joy could be gleaned from a life of war and struggle. It didn’t matter that you experienced it in hues of grey or vivid colour, because what was important was that you lived to experience life at all.

If anything, colour would simply be another distraction in a world where distractions could mean the the end of your fleeting life.

One doesn’t _need_ colour.

His parents never needed it. The army doesn’t need it. And the casualties who happened to be able to be able to see in it didn’t need it when they were pumped full of plasma and vaporized when the Covenant ended their lives.

Colour isn’t necessary to live, and it won’t help one stave off the inevitable encroaching reach of death.

That hasn’t changed for Felix since he stopped being a soldier and started being a mercenary.

The war’s over now, sure.

But old habits and ways of thinking die hard.

* * *

 

The thing about soulmates is that everyone wants to find theirs.

Even in war.

Even when a million other things are far more pressing, when luxuries of some intangible ‘sense of completion and belonging’ are rarely found and far from important.

People still _hope._

Somehow the thought of having one, the silly romantic ideal of finding one, runs eternal in the thoughts, and troops talk, and seek out contact, and, heaven forbid, ask directly to those they’re attracted to, people they suspect might be. “Excuse me,” they say, “But I think maybe,” followed by requests for a handshake, a kiss, a night together.

And towards the few people who already have met their others, who fight alongside them, or write lovesick messages back to some other colony far away, there is always a buzz of a running undercurrent of envious idolatry, as others ask and ask and long to learn what is it like? To meet someone who completes you? To see the world fully in colour? How does it _feel_?

Always, in the barracks, during downtime, in the showers, on _patrol_ , the topic is brought up again and again and _again_.

‘Have you met yours?’ and ‘I heard so and so has one back home’ and ‘what will you do if you meet yours?’

It’s easy, Felix learns, to navigate it, which non-answers will appease curiosity, which little white lies will be accepted, how to steer conversation to more palatable topics.

And requests for contact, a kiss, a round of sex - easy enough to indulge in, something fun enough to divulge joy from.

But it’s tiresome, all the same.

Sometimes combat is the best part of the day - the adrenaline, exertion, the chaos of war, the exhilaration of a successful kill, a successful op, the victory merely in surviving. No one in their unit can see in colour - it’s better that way, more tactically sound; nobody has time in life-or-death combat to deal with confusion if someone accidentally calls out a visual cue using colour to describe it - and Felix likes it that way best.

Battle is the best part, because there’s no room to think about the topic, no time for anyone to bring it up, only opportunity to do what he does best.

Few people share Felix’s thoughts on the matter.

Though several do share his reluctance to discuss it.

Locus is one of them.

From the day he met him, to Locus, it’s always been a non-issue.

To be fair, Locus has always been withdrawn, reluctant to converse, caught up in the whirlwind of war, concerned, so much so, about doing the correct thing to make a difference in the war, and then later to do what must be done as he is ordered.

He avoids the topic, his answers to the ever present questions curt, empty, inviting no further questions, or responding only to change the subject to matters ‘more concerning’. He’s never actually said if he cares for it - if he has a soulmate, or wants one, or if the notion of soulmates is of any importance to him or not - manages always to be ambiguous with his brevity, so Felix doesn’t know, if Locus hopes, one day to find his own.

But he also never asks.

And Locus is content never to bring it up.

It’s not the reason Felix has sought his company, during the war, and beyond it, accompanying him into the dirty business of mercenary work, settling unsettled business, ending unfinished conflicts, and chasing down bounties and questionable jobs for cash.

But he’d be lying if he said it weren’t a reason he stays.

* * *

 

“Why are we doing this again?” Felix asks, offhand, from his position, crouched behind cover, as they’re fired on by their targets across the scrap yard of the condemned property in the outskirts of the latest colony city they’re working in.

Their latest job isn’t a glamorous one, though the jobs rarely are. This one is messier than most - as they tend to be when corporations want particularly annoying militant protesters eliminated - but the money is good, and it’s far from a difficult job, considering.

Late in the job now, just fifteen (well, less now) heavily armed, desperate ex-commandos hiding out in an abandoned property in the country, with enough convenient cover of scrap metal and junk and crumbling stone walls to be annoying, firing down on them from a slightly elevated position because this place used to be a dump and there’s always a hill for the other side to use. No big deal.

Fighting on uneven ground littered with chunks of rock and steel and shit - that always sucks, but it’s no worse than what they dealt with in the war.

At least they managed to flush the gang out of the decrepit little shed they’d been using as a hideout, it always sucks to try to bust into a somewhat fortified structure with walls when it’s just the two of them.

“Because you said yes and signed the contract,” Locus responds, shortly, taking advantage of a lull in the shooting to snipe one, then another of the increasingly desperate targets across the way, before sub machine gunfire starts up again and Locus is forced to duck back down to avoid being shot in the head.

There aren’t that many of them left, after the carnage by their ramshackle shed and the trail of bodies over the scrap as he and Locus had chased them from one side of the property to the other.

“Tsk, you’re no fun,” Felix says, with a tilt of his head, though he hadn’t expected Locus to humour him, “And get your facts straight,” he says, with snark, settling his rifle over the top of his cover and eyeing up a line of sight, “ _we_ said yes to this job. You signed the contract first.”

“Focus, Felix.”

Felix fires once, leaning back as one of their targets jerks back, head blown back by the bullet, toppling over into the dust. “Boom,” Felix says, with a smug little grin as he ducks back down under cover, “Head shot.”

Just because he’s holding a conversation doesn’t mean his attention is elsewhere.

Locus remains unimpressed, giving only a “Hm,” to acknowledge what just occurred.

Locus is rarely impressed, but he doesn’t again voice his reservations about Felix’s need to talk while they work.

“So tell me again,” Felix prompts, watching Locus as he reloads his rifle while they wait for another window to shoot, “what did these guys do to deserve…” Felix takes a hand off his gun to twirl his finger in an absent loop as he searches for the appropriate word, “…us.”

“Does it matter?” Locus retorts, moving to another side of his crumbling cover wall to line up another shot.

“Sometimes I get curious,” Felix shrugs.

He’s not curious, not really. It’s fairly obvious why they were hired. Their clients rarely move in mysterious ways, as it were.

Honestly, he’s a little bored. A job a straightforward as this tends to lack a certain thrill, and talking to Locus at least, somehow makes the job that tiny bit more interesting.

“You know our client, Felix,” Locus murmurs, making two distinct hand motions to signal Felix to create a distraction. Which he does, by grabbing a sizable rock and chucking it over his wall of cover away from Locus. “These kinds of jobs are always for the same reasons as they always are,” Locus continues, absently, as their targets start shooting, ostensibly in the direction of the distraction, likely far too amped up to be thinking too rationally about what to aim at, before he fires, and the gunfire suddenly stops, then the shouting starts again. “Money,” Locus concludes, “Power.”

Felix looks over the wall.

No movement. They’re not done, by the target count, even assuming Locus’ shots were kill shots. Likely the other side regrouping behind cover.

“But to chase them out to the middle of nowhere?” Felix presses, absently ejecting his magazine to check his ammo before reloading it, “Like, this is remote.”

He can’t see Locus’ face through the inscrutable dome of his helmet, but the steady angle of his head tells him enough about Locus’ facial expression. “No it’s not,” Locus says, deadpan, as he swaps weapons, the sniper rifle clicking into place on the magnetic holster on his back.

He’s right. They’re not that far out from the city. If Felix squints, he can make out one or two towers of the few city skyscrapers in the distance.

“Still, you know, it’s time consuming,” Felix complains, wiggling his fingers here and there, “Fly all the way here, get out, blow up some shit, move to another location, shoot some other shit, call the pelican back, get on, fly back to the city–,” he huffs, settling his gun back in his hands, “Takes a long-ass time, is all I’m saying.”

“I don’t determine what goes into the jobs, Felix,” Locus says, simply, readying himself to stand and making three hand motions to inform Felix they’re going to press forward.

Felix shifts his weight, ready to spring over cover at Locus’ next order or when he next moves, “No,” he agrees, “You just say yes to them.”

“Would you rather we stick to the simple jobs?” Locus asks, turning his head to face him, and giving a sarcastic tilt of his head, communicating just how pointless he finds the whole conversation, despite his low, steady tone.

“Ha,” Felix scoffs with a shake of his head, “No way.”

“I thought not,” Locus confirms, then turns to face their targets’ position again, “Then stop complaining,” he orders, all business now, “The faster we finish, the faster we can return, the faster we get paid. Isn’t that what you look forward to?”

The question is mocking in its delivery.

Felix can’t help the upward quirk of his mouth, “Oh,” he sighs, only mostly sarcastic, “You know me so well.”

“Well enough to know money’s only the half of it,” Locus responds, blunt, matter of fact, then stands and rounds the battered little barricade he used as cover for the past ten minutes in a fluid motion, stalking forwards to advance on the last of their targets.

Felix laughs, and is only mildly surprised to find it’s a genuine one. “Oh, Locus,” he sings as he leaps over his own makeshift piece of cover to follow, “I could work with you for the rest of my life.”

It’s only after he’s said it - after they’ve moved forwards several feet, alert as they move up the slight incline to converge on the last of their targets behind their failing shield of protection - that Felix realizes that he meant what he said.

He really wouldn’t mind working, living, _being_ alongside Locus with their comfortable, un-pressured, black and white and grey working partnership, for the rest of his life, no matter how short it is.

The thought is only slightly disconcerting in how easy it is to accept it.

Felix glances over at his partner, just a moment as he considers that thought.

Briefly distracted, he barely has a cue before Locus yells his name - “Felix!”, a sound of warning, urgency - before his partner lunges at him and shoves him down and back, knocking the rifle out of his hands with his wild movement and shoving him into the dirt behind a battered mound of something that is barely passable as cover.

Felix barely musters angry confusion before the explosion occurs nearby, tearing through a half-shattered wall, washing heat and shrapnel and stone over them, scrap and dirt flying over and past them, bouncing off the exposed angles of his armour. The forces pushes them back, knocking Locus back and Felix over, rattling the earth and briefly impairing his hearing.

He moves instinctively, in the aftermath, as soon as he can reorient himself, yanking out his pistol as he rolls over, shaking his head in a futile effort to ease the ringing in his ears, then pushes himself back to his feet, picking out their last three targets through the dust and smoke as they leave cover to see if he and Locus were taken out. He narrows his eyes, pushing aside the incessant distracting ringing in his head, raises his arm and fires three times in rapid succession, then once more when the last man doesn’t drop immediately and fires back. The man misses. Wildly. Then he topples over.

Felix keeps his arm up until the ringing stops, breathing quietly in and out as he watches the bodies in the dust for movement, gaze darting back and forth for signs of life, trying to pick out what caused the blast in the rubble. He can’t pick out anything among the scattered rocks and charred metal, with the ringing in his head, it’s all a blur of black and grey.

He didn’t even see anything coming, not even a glimpse of motion in the corner of his vision.

What had Locus seen that tipped him off about the explosion before it happened?

“Locus,” he calls, cautiously, pistol up, pointing it at any vaguely human-shaped mass in the scrap.

Locus doesn’t answer. There’s a brief burst of static on the radio, then the background hum of it, settled, again.

There’s no movement behind him either.

“Locus?” Felix asks, again, turning to get a visual on his partner.

At first it’s hard to see, the rocks and dirt and Locus’ damnable dark armour blurring together into a mass of grey shapes and shadows, but the HUD compensates for lack of contrast and as soon as the pounding in his head subsides slightly, he can see the distinct dark markings painted on Locus’ armour, and the shift of movement as he struggles to move from where he lies. 

He doesn’t quite succeed.

“Gh,” Locus grunts, propping himself on one arm, then ultimately collapsing back onto his side.

“Oh shit–” Felix curses, once it’s apparent that of the two of them, only one of them escaped unscathed from the unlucky blast, “Locus,” he says, rushing over, darting over the uneven ground to skid to a stop by his body.

It takes some effort to roll Locus over, and Felix hesitates once, when Locus takes a sharp intake of breath in pain when Felix shifts him, hand pressing against his side, but he manages, and Locus eventually rolls onto his back groaning in pain, hand pressing instinctively up against his left side.

For good reason.

Felix’s HUD beeps immediately, markers popping up immediately to distinguish unnatural stains of grey as blood, and quite a lot of it.

The blast wasn’t kind, and Locus, lacking the benefit of that mound of dirt that spared Felix most of the damage, bore the brunt of the force, and was exposed to the flying shrapnel, rock, and rubble as it tore through the crumbling concrete wall the bomb was hidden behind.

Locus’ armour is scored with marks, hit with flying debris, the heat of the explosive marking his armour, the force tearing through some parts of the exposed undersuit, no doubt bruising ribs, muscle, hopefully not organs, knocking one of the shoulder guards off its cradle.

And driving a particularly ugly, sharp piece of rebar through his left side just under his ribs.

“Shit,” Felix curses, hands moving instinctively to keep pressure to the wound around the twist of metal, fumbling for a med pack on Locus’ person after he gets one hand well enough on it and Locus’ hand follows his own to do the same, though not well enough to stem the blood flow entirely, “Fuck.”

It takes entirely too long to find one, but as soon as he has one, Felix yanks the pouch off him with one hand, the other moving to take a hold of Locus’ helmet, triggering the release so he can ease it off his head so he can see his face, to monitor his consciousness first hand.

As soon as he gets it off, Locus’ eyes dart immediately to his through his visor, “The targets–” he says, and Felix tries his utmost not to roll his eyes at Locus’ single-minded thought process when it comes to work while he’s lying injured.

“Dead,” he states, in assurance, so Locus has at least one thing less to worry about, instead of biting out the sarcastic quip he instinctively wants to say, “I got them.”

“All?” Locus asks, as Felix works on opening the pack to get out the medical gear.

“Yeah,” Felix replies, dumping out the contents, snapping his other hand out to snatch at a biofoam cylinder before it clatters off a rock and rolls away, “I think so,” he says, then curses, the cylinder is ruptured, foam already leaking out.

“Should… make sure–”

Felix makes a frustrated noise, tossing the useless cylinder aside, gesturing violently, “Jesus Christ, Locus!” he exclaims, “Really?”

He’s not sure if he’s more exasperated that Locus is still so dead set on protocol or if he’s insulted that Locus thinks he might have failed to kill any one of their targets.

“…are you…?” Locus asks, acquiescing that perhaps now is not the time to press the issue of the job.

“I’m okay,” Felix responds, automatically, fiddling with the injector, fumbling through Locus’ pack to find the other cylinder, hands moving automatically, “You…” he starts to say, then pauses, remembering what happened - the shout, the shove, precious seconds of Locus’ time wasted covering his lapse of attention rather than attending to himself - “I’m fine,” Felix concludes, lamely, unable and unwilling to say more.

“Good,” Locus says, and though his voice is a little flat, he sounds, somehow, relieved.

Felix doesn’t know what to make of it.

So he doesn’t try to puzzle it out.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” he snaps, instead, looking up and straight at his partner, biofoam momentarily forgotten in his frustration.

“You weren’t watching–”

“Shut up,” Felix snaps, “You’re–” he fumbles for words, “Don’t–” can’t put together a sentence, changes the subject, “Where the fuck is–?” he continues, with increasing distress, then curses again when he finds the other cylinder, in the depths of the pack leaking biofoam all over the inside. Useless.

“Felix, calm down,” Locus says, infuriatingly level-headed, despite his injured state.

“How are _you_ calm right now?,” Felix snaps, “Your whole left side is… fucking…” Felix glances over the bleeding wound, waving aggressively at blood staining Locus’ wounded side, bleeding sluggishly around the shrapnel in his side, slowly and steadily staining his armour, the dirt, the earth with harsh, urgent colour, “You’re bleeding all over the fucking–” Felix cuts himself off, doubles back to stare at the wound, “the fucking…” he struggles to continue, his mind caught up, stumbling over words as he processes what exactly he’s seeing, ”What the fuck…?!”

“…Felix…?” Locus says, but Felix doesn’t hear him, everything secondary, forgotten in the wake of what he’s seeing.

Colour.

That’s _colour_.

Locus’ blood is painting the earth in colour - urgent and bright and blinding - vibrant and impossible to ignore, a single hue that Felix has never seen, doesn’t know the name of, and yet instinctively knows, feels, understands naturally that, yes, that is the colour blood would be, a tint that somehow represents the life it shows is in danger.

Felix turns quickly, gaze darting to Locus’ face, down his armour, then away again, to pick out shades of the earth - but everything else is still the same.

Everything but the blood is still black and white and grey.

Felix blinks, once, twice, then a third time, holding his eyes shut for three seconds, just to gather his mind, chase away any hallucinations. But when he opens them again, it’s still there, highlighting Locus’ wounded side with pigment, bright perhaps already, but even brighter so, nearly luminescent through the HUD’s contrast filter to compensate for colour blindness.

His heart pounds in his chest, pulse beating through his head.

God it’s everywhere, down Locus’ side and smeared over his torso and when Felix looks down on his hands, it’s there, on the pads of his fingers, smeared on his palms, dark and yet no less vibrant on the black of his gloves.

He doesn’t understand.

His hands are shaking.

Why are his hands shaking?

“Felix,” Locus rasps, and Felix gives a visible start, catching his breath, gaze darting away from the stains of colour on his hands, the flow of blood a vibrant trickle and smear down Locus’ side, staining the dirt and rubble. He stares instead, at Locus’ face, trying to find something else to look at, something else to keep his gaze.

It’s hard. Everything else is shades of grey. None of it can keep his gaze from sliding, unconsciously, helplessly, to the colour assaulting his eyes.

And it _is_ colour. It has to be.

Why is he seeing colour?

“Felix,” Locus repeats, sterner, firmer, despite his compromised position, reaching out to grab his shaking hand by the wrist, “Focus,” he orders, firmly, gritting his teeth as he hisses out the ‘s’.

Felix jerks at the touch, turns his head to stare into his injured partner’s eyes.

“I…” he stammers, “You…”

Locus’ expression is beleaguered, but steady. His gaze is firm, unwavering, despite his injury, his pain, the shuddering breaths he’s taking..

Does he not see it? Isn’t he supposed to?

Because this is _colour_ , and no one ever sees it _alone_.

Isn’t that how it goes?

Felix meets his gaze, resists the urge to look away. Surely Locus has to be seeing this too. But there’s no indication. No confusion in his eyes.

There’s colour there, too, Felix notices, finally. Different. A cooler hue, flecks of it dusting the grey of his irises. He doesn’t know which colour this is either, but it’s calming somehow. He focuses on that instead of the rush of the other hue, the confused tangle of uncertainty that wonders if he’s the only one of them that can see, feels the breath escaping him in a quiet rush as he finds resolve, calm.

Enough calm to focus on what’s happening, what’s just happened.

What he needs to focus on.

 _There was an explosion_ , he recounts, in his mind, focusing on Locus’ eyes, not the rush of blood staining his armour, the rubble, the earth, taking deeper breaths to ground himself.

 _The targets have been taken out._ No gunshots since the last four he fired before he checked on Locus. No sounds to indicate the others on the other side are still alive. Felix still isn’t sure what caused it.

 _Locus has been injured. The blast caught him as he–_ Felix’s thoughts hiccup, reorganize, continue in images, memories rather than words. A shout, the sense of being unbalanced, the punch of the force knocking them over, the lurch, the heat and shake of an explosion too close for comfort.

The memory of being protected, shielded, by his larger, worrying, idiot partner.

What was he thinking, throwing himself in the way like some fucking overprotective martyr?

Felix settles his hands on Locus’ armour, keeps his eyes stubbornly away from the injury he can still see so clearly, leaking the blood in full technicolour in his mind’s eye. Locus’ armour caught the brunt of it, but there’s the ugly twist of rebar through his side, shrapnel propelled with enough force, the edges of it sharp enough, the blast close enough to drive it with enough forth through the air to dent the armour, shred through some of the undersuit, drive itself into his side while the blast damaged his armour, burned and scraped the skin under the protective gear bloody and raw, the force likely enough to bruise muscle and bone.

 _My partner is bleeding out._ Felix realizes, the gravity sinking in far too late after the knowledge of what’s happened, and he tears his eyes away from Locus’ colour-flecked gaze to search out his own med-pack instead.

He doesn’t have time for this.

_Locus doesn’t have time for this._

He yanks his own medical supply out and tries to focus on assembling the biofoam injector, shoving the canister into its difficult slot, trying not to be distracted by the calls to attention to the blood leaking over Locus’ armour, staining the floor, smearing on his palms - tracks of colour everywhere he touches.

He leaves prints of colour on the canister as he fumbles with it, smears of it along the depressor as he shifts his grip.

He can’t concentrate.

The contrast is hurting his eyes.

“This is Felix,” he says into his radio, tearing his gaze away from the wound in its mess of colour, snapping the canister in place as he stares, determinedly at a pile of rocks and scrap metal some few feet away, “We need immediate evac and medical attention. I have a man down.”

It probably takes maybe five seconds for the response from the pilot of their pelican to respond.

Somehow it feels like five minutes instead.

“Copy that,” she says, “What are your coordinates?”

Felix glances through the info on his HUD, relaying their location as Locus breathes and bleeds beside him.

He can multitask. He should multitask.

Why isn’t he multitasking?

Felix jerks back into motion, shifting to bring himself closer to Locus, so he can reach the wound and the piece of metal causing it.

“Is your location secure?” the pilot asks, as Felix picks through the mess of blood with his eyes, finding the widest part of the wound, where it would be best to deploy the biofoam, work on first line treatment, determine if other bleeding parts are superficial or deep and need more attention.

“We’re done, mission accomplished,” Felix says, curt, “Just get your fucking pelican here so we leave this dump and get the medical attention we need.”

“Roger that,” the pilot responds, nonplussed at his tone or his language, “I don’t have a medical team on hand to come to your position. Will he be stable enough to transport to the city?”

Felix tightens his grip on the injector, “Yeah,” he says. It won’t be pretty - in fact it’ll probably suck for Locus - but with this kind of injury, if they can get the wound sealed, at least, he’ll be fine to get proper medical help after they fly back to civilization.

That is, assuming no organs were damaged.

Felix disregards the thought as soon as he has it.

The armour should have taken the brunt of the hit, even with the particularly unlucky piece of rebar, it shouldn’t have pierced in too far to cause heavy damage to something vital like his kidney. Or his spleen.

Shouldn’t.

Locus has survived worse.

“ETA ten minutes,” the pilot says, mechanically, then signs off, having finished her communication.

Felix doesn’t respond. There’s nothing else to say.

How deep in did the bar go? he wonders, hand hovering absently over it, unsure of what he could do to find out.

Couldn’t have been that deep. It’s hard to say just by eyeballing it.

“Don’t–” Locus says, and that word is enough, somehow, to drag Felix’s attention back to the forefront, to Locus’ face, away from the colour assaulting his eyes, the metal dug into the wound, the vibrant hue itching painfully in his brain.

He pauses, mind catching up to his instinctive actions, running through protocols for first line care in case of injury in combat.

Locus grimaces, “Don’t pull it out.”

Felix stares at him, uncomprehending, “What,” he says, then glances over at Locus’ wound, gaze darting over the blood painting colour over Locus’ side quickly to find the metal twist of rebar, then back to Locus’ face, mustering a mildly insulted look, pushing through the uncertainty dominating his mind, “I work with knives, Locus, I’m not a fucking idiot.”

Stab wounds 101: don’t pull it out.

Who the fuck does Locus think he’s talking to? He didn’t lose that much blood, did he?

Locus manages a brief upturn of the corner of his mouth, though it quickly morphs into another grimace of pain, “You look like you needed a reminder.”

Not that much blood lost then, though his voice is weaker than it should be.

Felix doesn’t like the sound of it.

“Hold still and shut up,” he orders, leaning over him and readying the biofoam injector. He closes his eyes briefly, knowing Locus can’t see his face, his expression, before he takes a breath and forcefully brings his gaze back to face the bloody mess of Locus’ side.

The blood is darker now.

And yet the colour somehow remains blinding.

Felix braces his hand on Locus’ torso to keep him still, then jams the nozzle up beside the metal in the wound and presses down to inject the biofoam.

Locus isn’t prone to making sudden noises - doesn’t shout or gasp loudly or whimper - but he does jerk in pain, hands balling into fists as he grits his teeth. Felix winces in sympathy - the initial injection of the foam is always, always a nasty surprise before the analgesic kicks in.

After that he falls back, grunting in discomfort as the pain subsides.

Felix ejects the canister, tossing it aside, turning to watch Locus’ face, monitor signs of consciousness as his radio crackles with an ETA of three minutes.

A brief turn of his head to face east confirms an approaching shape in the sky.

“Hey,” Felix says, leaning over Locus’ face to look him in the eye through the visor of his helmet.

In the corner of his vision, he can still see it. The dark pool of colour, a stark and urgent reminder of just how much blood Locus has lost, in part because of the distraction of the addition to his sight.

He doesn’t want to think too hard about why that, and only that, is no longer grey or black or white.

Locus stares back up at him. His eyes aren’t fully open, but he’s awake, cognizant.

There’s nothing in his gaze that shows he sees the same thing - colour, the blinding hue of blood, or other things that might have gained vibrancy or saturation or tincture; that something has changed in his vision. Nothing like how Felix knows showed on his own face at the moment he blinked and blood was no longer grey, expression and confusion hidden only by the grace of his helmet and his dark visor.

There’s nothing in Locus’ eyes that’s any different. Nothing save for the flecks of cooler hues dusting his irises, tracking Felix in his vision as he moves.

“…Stay awake, asshole,” Felix orders, unable to think of anything to say, unwilling to voice the multitude of questions beginning to form in the back of his whirring mind. It’s not the time.

Locus doesn’t promise anything, doesn’t say anything, really, in response, but he does manage to make a soft sound like a ‘hmph’, and he reaches out, hand bumping gently against Felix’s arm in a motion like assurance he’ll try.

Felix takes it as a good sign.

Locus never tries anything in half measures.

He should be fine.

Still, Felix waits until there’s an ETA of 1 minute, watching Locus lie there and blink and breathe and grimace at the sky, until he’s sure Locus absolutely won’t die, before the pelican arrives at least, before he gets up, reloading his pistol as he stalks over to the last position of their stubborn, now incapacitated targets.

Of the three final marks, two are dead, shots clean, if slightly off target.

The last one is still breathing, teeth gritted, breath laboured, lying flat on his back, unable to move, a hole through his chest, blood painting the earth in a mess of muddy, brilliant colour.

All blood is the same colour, it seems.

“Fff–” the man struggles to say, between shuddering breaths, “F-fu–”

Felix doesn’t wait to hear his final scathing curse. Simply raises his pistol and fires once into his head, and a second time for good measure.

He stands and stares, just a moment more, to consider the spatterings of blood and flesh and colour, over the grey shades of rock and dirt and metal and trash.

Then the pelican arrives, engines screaming as it banks to land, and Felix turns away from the carnage to return to his injured partner’s side.

* * *

 

Red.

He remembers.

The medic for their squad in the war had been half a matched pair. Not technically a combatant, so no strict adherence to the ‘no colour sight’ rule of the squad. Couldn’t be picky with the medics, in a war.

Maybe that made him a better medic. Maybe it hadn’t.

Certainly hadn’t made him any luckier. The ability to see in full colour hadn’t made a difference when the Covenant tore him apart.

“Blood is red,” Felix had overheard him once, before it all went to shit, as he changed the bandages on an injured private in the medbay, indulging the questions of another curious young private watching nearby - a naïve young romantic who still thought they’d have a chance to one day see the spectrum.

“It’s a bright, vibrant colour,” he’d said, trying to explain, conscious that his audience is still colour blind, “Warm colour, eye-catching. Colour of life, it is.” Then he’d laughed, an ugly sound, “You can really tell it is, when people bleed. Like the life pouring out of them unless you can stop it.”

Felix had left then. Hadn’t been interested in another man waxing poetic over something very few people would ever see. More interested on what the next meal was, weapons maintenance, the next mission on the horizon.

He shakes his head, focuses on breathing, rests his head against the rattling wall of the pelican, glancing over at Locus’ still form secured to the opposite side, armour still stained with blooming, bleeding colour all down his side, his front, though his wounds are now sealed. well enough, the flow stemmed by biofoam and slowly failing first line medical supply.

Felix looks away, back down at his hands. Smears of colour, still, clinging stubbornly to the rubber, the plaster of his gloves.

Stains of life - Locus’ stubborn yet fleeting one - all over his palms, up and down his fingers. A bloom of red among a sea of greys and blacks and white in his vision.

He didn’t understand then.

He does now.


	2. Chapter 2

They lose a significant portion of the pay check to get the client to foot the medical bill.

Felix can’t find it in himself to protest it much, not even when the man corners him in the clinic they closed off so Locus could get some form of surgery without too many witnesses, and lays it all out - what this will cost them since he had to hook them up with discrete medical help, the right expertise, had to jump hoops to keep the records off the books.

It’s just so hard to focus on what the man is spitting when the red cross on the sign of the door of the clinic, the hue of the leaves of the plant in the corner, and even the client’s deep red tie, all of it draws Felix’s gaze, his attention; burrows into his brain and yanks out the confusing thoughts he’s not ready to think much about, all the while Locus is somewhere else, in a room not even remotely like an operating theater, presumably getting half-decent surgery.

It’s not like he knows the illicit surgeon’s credentials, if she even is a surgeon - this looks like a GP’s clinic - but who knows, surgeons have clinics, sometimes, supposedly. It’s hard to trust even if the client used her before with past illegal mercenary problems.

The uncertainty, the unknown variables - it makes him uneasy.

Knowing Locus’ life might be in the balance as well, it makes him even more so.

“Are you even listening to me?” the client snarls, when Felix’s gaze is drawn away again, this time by the receptionist as she stalks back across the room, to readjust the ‘closed’ sign hanging on the door, knocked off center when the client stormed in like he owned the place.

The charm on her necklace is in colour. Jade, judging by the shape, the smoothness of the rock, the hole through the center. He doesn’t know the name of the colour it is is. It mocks him, a glinting gleam of colour, hanging on a bright red string.

Red.

Why is everything still in grey except red and that other colour?

What even is that colour?

“I heard you,” Felix snaps before the man can go off on another tirade. He must look particularly pissed, because the client immediately clams up, eyes narrowed, but doesn’t continue speaking. Nothing makes sense, and being cussed at by a man who’s already taken back what he’s owed for this fuck up is doing nothing to help, “You’re deducting what needs to be paid to cover this from the payment. Fine. But we finished the job, we expect to be paid everything else that we’re owed.”

“Hmph,” the client steps back, done with his outbursts once Felix has verbally agreed to the pay cut, “Your payments will be deposited in the account as per we agreed once we know the final cost of this.”

“So after Locus leaves this shitty clinic,” Felix summarizes, ignoring the receptionist when she shoots him a nasty look from behind her desk, offended on behalf of the doctor she answers to, “Fine.”

They aren’t going to stay long anyway. Not like this shitty medical office has beds for long term stay, and they can’t stay put in a semi-public location where the likelihood of people asking questions increases with each passing hour.

As soon as Locus is stable, they’re clearing out.

The client isn’t happy, and Felix’s agreement to things without the appropriate attitude does nothing to appease him.

“If he dies,” the client hisses, irritable and snide and eager to get the last word, and Felix feels something inside recoil at the sound, the shape, the implications of the words, “I’m only paying for _your_ cut of what’s left to be paid.”

A retort barely forms past the stage of indignant intent. A snappish response should be easy, natural, but it falls to pieces on Felix’s tongue. The very implication that Locus could die suddenly freezes his thoughts and steals the response from his chords before they can be voiced.

Something sickly and cold finds it’s way down his esophagus, trickling down his spine, and his eyes dart, quickly, unconsciously, across the space, to the bright beacons of colour that happen to be in the room.

That Locus would die from this? Absurd. The Covenant couldn’t kill him in the worst of times. Shrapnel is nothing compared to that.

 _But he could die_ , an insidious little voice says, and Felix hates it as soon as the thought makes itself known.

The client smirks, satisfied, and passes by, deliberately bumping into Felix’s shoulder as he passes to make for the door. Felix stumbles, briefly, and realizes his discomfort must have shown on his face. He grimaces. He’s let the man believe he got the best of him, with insults and petty words.

Felix glares at the door as it shuts, and the client leaves, followed by whatever bodyguards he brought with him to stand guard outside the clinic door.

The receptionist coughs.

Felix sneers at her, but she doesn’t notice, absorbed by her computer at the front, so he turns back to face the door separating the waiting room from the examination rooms.

He stomps down his thoughts of uncertainty, the unsettling sense that something is wrong.

The grey persisting in his vision - something he regarded as a visual tether to normality in the wake of the sudden unnatural, unexplained bloom of colour - now seems sinister, somehow.

* * *

 

Locus doesn’t die, despite what was the bomb and its errant launched projectiles’ best efforts.

The doctor offers the offending piece of rebar, and some other miscellaneous bloodstained metal fragments she’d extracted, to Felix to keep. She calls them a ‘memento of our time together’ with a sharp and mocking grin, holding out the plastic bag for him to see. Felix resists the urge to gut her for the joke.

“Nothing serious,” she says, after tossing the bag into a nearby trash bin, “No significant damage to the internal organs, though he’ll have a nasty scar, but that’s nothing new,” the doctor shrugs, sliding two fingers under the hem of her right glove to yank it off, before balling it up in her left hand.

Felix doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have anything to ask. He supposes maybe he should feel offended somehow on Locus’ behalf - that this stranger has seen the evidence of his past wounds, mapped his obvious scars with her eyes - but she’s a doctor who treated him, so really, being indignant about it seems childish.

There’s blood on her gloves, spots of it on her scrubs. Stains of red that continue to be distracting, doubly so because he knows whose blood it is.

He’s beginning to hate the colour.

“Keep him hydrated, keep his stitches clean, and he’ll live,” the doctor continues, turning her glove inside out as she yanks it off, keeping the other glove and the bloodstained outside safely contained inside, so it won’t contaminate anything else.

“Is that all,” Felix asks, with little to no enthusiasm. There’s little to be enthused about.

“’I’m sure this isn’t your first time,” she responds, smoothly.

She’s right. It isn’t. Clearly Locus has weathered worse, and they know the risks of their business. Neither of them are stranger to recovery time.

“Then we’re leaving,” Felix says, to the point. The less time they spend here, the less money they lose.

“Good,” the doctor says, dismissively, tossing her gloves in another bag and binning that as well, “You’ve wasted my entire afternoon.”

Felix resists the urge to say something insulting in response. It’s a difficult thing to do.

“I had to re-book ten appointments to deal with you,” she continues, turning to push her way into the back, gesturing for Felix to follow, “I doubt it will be worth it.”

Felix walks in after her. He’s sure it was a goddamned chore.

A chore for her administrative assistant, anyway. Clearly she didn’t have to reschedule her own patients while she was doing illicit surgery on her impromptu patient.

She leads him to the last examination room in the hall, across from a storage room the door marked conspicuously with a number 5 and a hand-written sign that says, “Room Under Renovations”, and lets him in before herself, as a courtesy, maybe, just as likely so she’s not cornered in the room with him at the door.

Locus looks about as good as anyone does, after surgery.

Not great, but not dead. Unconscious still, and he could be mistaken for being asleep if Felix didn’t know that Locus prefers to sleep on his side, not his back. The blood, the bandages, the scattered evidence of a hasty blood transfusion and tools of operative surgery, and the sorry state of the undersuit the doctor had to cut through to get enough space to operate is also a dead giveaway.

Felix walks into the room, striding right up to Locus’ side. He’s breathing quietly, but otherwise he’s still. It’s weird, Felix thinks. Locus has never remained asleep in any other case when Felix wandered by to stand over him.

It isn’t until he spots the saline drip to the side, and the scattered pieces of Locus’ armour - grey with straight lines of colour, not red the other one, carved through the metal - to the side of the room that Felix realizes his first problem.

The doctor knows it too, how difficult it will be for him to move Locus. He knows she knows as soon as he turns to look at her.

“You want to rent a wheelchair?” she asks with a tilt of her head, “It’ll be two hundred bucks.”

“No gurneys?” he asks, sardonically.

“This isn’t a hospital,” she says back, in a tone that communicates just how much she knows he’s unfamiliar with the workings of the building, “Your friend just got an undocumented surgery in a follow up clinic in a building of medical offices. Wheelchair’s the best you’ll get.”

Felix considers moving Locus on his own.

He abandons the consideration quickly. Locus is taller and heavier than him, he can’t carry him, and the best he could do to support him out of the building to their car underground would result in undignified stumbling, more drawn attention, and the increased possibility he’d tear Locus’ stitches. They’re on the third floor.

He doesn’t have a choice.

“I’ll even throw in a saline drip and the catheter for free.”

Felix narrows his eyes at her. She stares back evenly, not at all bothered by his ire.

He wishes he could muster more anger, but he’s tired, physically and mentally, and, truthfully, if he were in her position, he’d probably charge two hundred to borrow a wheelchair too.

Maybe more.

“Fine,” he says, flatly, “Add it to the tab.”

Honestly he’s a little impressed she has the balls to charge for the chair.

* * *

 

It’s a bit of an operation, to move Locus from the third floor to the basement underground parking lot, to their SUV, parked where it shouldn’t be, in a parking lot reserved for doctors.

The doctor’s administrative assistant helps. Knows the tricks to pushing buttons in order to get the elevator to go from third floor to basement without stopping on the way for witnesses to get on, helps with Locus’ armour so Felix can avoid a third back and forth.

He bargains to take the wheelchair with him. He’ll need it to move Locus when he reaches their home base apartment, in this colony city.

She lets him, but only after he says, and repeats, that he’ll drive the stupid thing back to return it.

All the meanwhile, Locus doesn’t wake up once.

In the car, he changes, dumping his armour in the back, scattering it in pieces on the floor, while Locus lies across the back seat, pulling on civilian clothes.

Then he drives home, or what passes for it on this colony. The drive is routine, nondescript. If anything stands out, it’s the occasional flash of colour on the road - cars painted the colour of blood, stop signs bright and eye-catching in the same hue, the occasional passing tree, with leaves the colour of Locus’ eyes, of the patterns of paint on Locus’ armour.

Felix tears his gaze away every time, keeps his eyes on the road, the normal, natural shades of grey.

It gets easier with each distraction.

He leaves the armour in the SUV, both his and Locus’ scattered in pieces in the trunk, in the back, all over the floor. He can’t change Locus out of his tattered undersuit, not in the limited space of the SUV, and not when the only change of clothes he has for Locus are slightly too tight-fitting to be easy to do. The best he can do is drape his jacket over him once he’s got him in the wheelchair and hope nobody asks any questions on the way up from the car part to their apartment on the seventh floor.

Nobody does.

It’s easy to look threatening enough so nobody wants to look too close or ask questions.

After that he merely goes through the motions.

They have their own medical supply in the apartment, half a closet for bandages and needles and tubes, and meds, and bags of saline, among other things. He works automatically, to get Locus into his own room, his own bed, yanks his ruined undersuit off him, changes him into loose fitting pants and a T-shirt.

Then he arranges him on the bed, sets up all the medical equipment necessary to keep his partner alive and somewhat comfortable through his state of unconsciousness, checks his bandages, and then lets him lie.

He pauses, after, just to stare at Locus, who is lying quietly, back in his own bed.

The red is starting to seep through some of the white of the bandages, but it’s not serious enough yet to warrant a change, just yet.

The colour is still present - not a hallucination brought on by shock, too persistent to be a momentary visual artifact brought on by emotion.

He still doesn’t know why he’s seeing it.

Felix bites his lip. He wants answers.

But for now, he can wait.

He decides not to return the chair just yet.

As it is, he’s tired, he might need it later, and maybe he’s feeling a little petty about having to pay for the privilege to use it.

* * *

 

Locus stays in bed for three days. He’s asleep whenever Felix checks on him, but over time he changes position, from lying on his back to lying on his uninjured side, and the glass of water Felix leaves on the side table does empty, and he needs to refill it day by day, but otherwise, Locus stays in bed, remains asleep, recovering slowly.

Felix doesn’t linger by his side - to do so is pointless and a waste of time - only checks in periodically to make sure he’s still alive, maintain whatever medical needs as necessary.

He doesn’t leave the apartment, in case anything happens - if Locus needs assistance or if anyone tries anything. It’s unlikely, with how careful they are to keep themselves unknown when they’re lying low and off the job, but it’d be naive to think nobody would try something. There are always enemies to be made in this kind of work, and who knows who might hold grudges long after the offense has been made.

He stays in, has food delivered to the front and picks up in the lobby, checks on correspondence from potential future clients and replies to any that are interesting and work with Locus’ necessary recovery window.

Mostly, Felix takes the time to think, and avoid thinking in equal measure.

The apartment is mostly in shades of grey. A model of normalcy, but still, things stand out - innocuous things that are equally vexing and mocking in the hues they now appear in.

Their medical kits have marks of red, little crosses and logos that make sense, in hindsight, having seen the signs in the medical building. Locus’ armour, marked with green - Felix learns the hue’s name after consulting a colour legend on the internet, picking out the name under the only other circle in colour on the legend of different grey circle shades - which Felix studies after he lugs their armour up from the car to clean.

Actually, it turns out several of Locus’ possessions are green - his favoured mug, some of the lines on the spare blanket he keeps in the hall closet, his towel. It sparks some suspicion, on Felix’s part - makes him suspect Locus can see in colour as well, perhaps - but he can’t confirm it, because still, most of Locus’ things remain in different shades of grey, and it’s likely the green appears, in black and white and grey tinted vision, as a shade of grey he merely favours.

It’s easier than considering the alternative - that Locus could see in colour for long before Felix realized the colour of his blood was red - and he doesn’t want to ponder the implications of that.

The numbers of his alarm clock in his room are lit up in red. Bright and bold and annoying, illuminating his bedroom in the dark of night. The colour keeps him awake, not only harsh on the eyes, surrounded by darkness, but harsh on the mind, driving circling thoughts of the implications it all means, to see in colour, what it might imply of Locus, what it means of the partnership between him and his recovering partner.

He’s tempted to unplug the damned thing - clocks are so out dated as it is - but somehow, he can’t bring himself to. He’ll need it - it’s the only thing with a loud and jarring enough alarm to wake him up in the morning - or so he tells himself.

He turns his back to it instead.

* * *

 

With Locus out of commission and tethered by the necessity of watching his partner’s back in his time of recovery, there’s not much to do.

So Felix takes his time to research in the days he remains in, living out of the apartment, and keeping an eye on his partner to make sure he doesn’t keel over and die suddenly in the night.

Even if he doesn’t know what the appearance of jarring red and cooling green mean for himself, he can, at least find out the facts of his change in vision, and why he can only see two of the colours in the spectrum.

Research is dull and irritating. Too much of it on the sudden bloom of the full spectrum, leading to pages of uninformed romantic rambling, collections of discussions of how it’s portrayed in the media in the latest romantic movies, first-hand accounts of the popularized stereotypical experience, when two soulmates lock eyes and suddenly the world, in a blink, changes entirely.

He trudges through the results, lying on the couch with his data pad, going through cups of coffee and leftover takeout, occasionally getting sick enough of the romantically-focused rhetoric to dump the thing on the floor and pace restlessly through the apartment, and do some cardio in the side room to occupy his mind and body instead.

Eventually he finds it, researching academic papers instead of layman’s accounts and wishful online ramblings.

It’s called “Chromatic Adjustment” - the period of time after two people - a matched pair or ‘soulmates’, or whatever - form the beginning of that potential romantic bond at their first meeting or after that first touch or… first… somethings. It’s the accumulation of colour perception, spreading through one’s field of vision - the transformation from seeing entirely in hues of grey to the so called brilliant spectrum of full colour - when you see ‘them’ or touch ‘them’ or meet ‘them’ for that first time and it’s supposed to move you, to shock you, to alert you that hey, you’ve found ‘them’ - that somebody who’s supposed to complete you, that will stay with you and love you for the rest of your life.

For some it’s slow, stretching over days, weeks. For others it’s instant, goes from grey to colourful in the blink of an eye.

There are a dozen different theories to why that all is.

And none of it makes sense to Felix.

Even the scientific literature struggles, at times, to be objective about the phenomenon, scattering romantic buzz words through the abstracts and the results and the conclusions - unquantifiable words like ‘soulmates’ and ‘bonding’ and ‘love’, alternating with poetic waxing about the ‘brilliance of colour’.

Romantic notions aside, the research does give him enough to understand with decent comprehension what exactly the experience is, and will be like.

What it doesn’t tell him is why it is all happening.

Because otherwise, none of the pieces line up.

Soulmates. A first meeting what wasn’t a first or a meeting. Chromatic adjustment starting with two and only two colours.

Nothing makes sense.

* * *

 

On the evening of third day, he receives a correspondence from the client.

A check of their shared account finds the full cost of the job paid in full - for both of them.

The payment breakdown he receives ends up showing they lost $1500 for the wheelchair.

Felix gives a snort when he sees it. He glances over at the chair sitting by the door, folded up, waiting to be used again. He supposes that means they can keep it.

* * *

 

On the fourth day of Locus’ recovery, Felix wakes up in the morning to a room that is grey.

Nothing new, though he is a little later to wake up than usual.

He blinks, rolls over, contemplates lying in bed a little longer, before he realizes what is out of place.

The numbers of his infuriating alarm clock.

He sits up and twists his body to stare at the offending timekeeper across the room.

The red has faded to merely a hint of lightish red, bleeding through the bright grey-white of its glowing numbers.

Felix throws the covers off and launches himself off the bed. He doesn’t know why he suddenly saw shades of red and green, and only red and green, since that day in the junkyard after the scrappy-made bomb, but he does know why colours fade.

There’s only one reason for them to fade after they appear.

The topic of a hundred and one dozen tragedies, in written stories and movies and plays and poems across time.

Felix yanks open his bedroom door with too much force, rushing into the narrow apartment corridor to the next room over where Locus is, swearing under his breath. Locus has been as fucking fine as he could be with a healing puncture wound in his side, no hiccups in health or concerns since Felix checked him last. No signs of infection, no evidence of exacerbated injury since Felix last saw the wound, there’s no _reason_ for this now.

He rushes through the open door of Locus’ bedroom and skids to a stop on the hardwood floor, his bare feet stopping his forward momentum with ease.

His pulse pumps his blood in a rush through his body, he’s fully aware he’s breathing too heavily for such a small bout of physical exertion.

He stares at the bed.

Locus isn’t here.

Felix’s gaze darts all over the room. Nothing. He rushes over to the connecting bathroom - nothing - then turns around to stare, again at the bed.

There’s blood on the sheets. It looks just like whatever seeped out of the bandages over time.

He’s not sure of that. It doesn’t look like a spatter, but…

He swears under his breath, yanks open the drawer to the bedside table, pulling out the pistol and checking if it’s loaded.

What are the chances of someone breaking in to deal with Locus while he was asleep without alerting him? Slim? Very slim. Still possible.

He rushes out the door, keeping his steps as light as he can as he does so. There’s a clink in the kitchen, and he pauses, slows his steps to a creep, flattening himself against the side of the hallway of the apartment into the open area, where the kitchen is separated from the living room and the hallway deeper in by only the demarcation of a change from tile to hardwood floor.

Felix takes one breath, two, then whirls around the corner from cover, pistol first, pointed right at whatever is in the kitchen.

He doesn’t shoot.

It’s Locus, hunched over the island in the kitchen, glaring at the space in front of his stupid green mug, right arm curled over himself to clutch at his bandaged side. There’s blood seeping through the white of the bandages. It’s grey and dark with only a hint of red.

It’s just Locus. He hasn’t noticed him, too busy glaring at the counter top, breathing through his nose as he holds his injured side.

Felix takes a deep breath, lowering the weapon. His hands are shaking, and his head feels light with relief.

Relief that is quickly displaced by confusion, a wave of frustration in reaction to that, then anger, at being so concerned over fucking _nothing._

“What the _fuck_ are you doing?!” Felix snaps, and Locus’ head jerks up at the outburst, and Felix flinches as well, internally, surprised at the sound of frustration and confused outrage in his own voice.

Of course Locus would want to get out of the bed at some point. He’s never been one to like lying around being vulnerable.

Still, Felix can’t stop the overwhelming surge of frustration and embarrassment over his unwarranted concern, because if Locus was going to get out of bed he should have fucking _told him._

“Look at you!” Felix continues, the words bursting out before he can stop them, “You fucking _idiot_! You really think you’re good to get the fuck out of bed?”

Locus just stares back at him, brow furrowed, with pain, but he looks, also irritated, as per usual, but also a little confused.

“You’re bleeding all over the fucking floor!” Felix yells.

Locus looks, then looks back with a flat expression. He’s not, the seeping wound not serious enough to soak too much through the bandages. Even in pain he manages to look so judgmental.

It’s _infuriating_.

“Get back in fucking bed,” Felix snaps, striding into the kitchen, flicking the safety on the pistol before he slaps it on the island counter top, “Before you kill yourself trying to make your shitty goddamned tea.”

Locus just stares, glancing down at the gun, then turning and following him, watching, as Felix strides around him, taking Locus’ green mug off the counter top, setting it beside the stove before he yanks the electric kettle off its stand to fill with water to boil.

“Felix,” Locus says, once. In question. He sounds mildly concerned.

He shouldn’t be.

Then again, who is he fooling? Locus knows him well enough to know something doesn’t feel right.

Felix knows he’s acting out of character, but he doesn’t know how to stop. He can still feel his heartbeat in his head, the echoes of panic from realizing Locus’ condition might have deteriorated while he was asleep, the quieting rush of the aftermath of relief, upon realizing nothing is wrong after all. He shuts off the tap and all but drops the kettle back on its stand, pressing the button to turn on the heat to boil. He glances over at Locus’ mug.

It’s green. Still. Strong green, no fading colour.

Why is the green okay, but the red starting to go?

Nothing makes sense.

“Felix?” Locus says, again, quieter.

Felix ignores him, just stares at the kettle as he waits for it to boil, tapping his fingers on the counter top as he waits.

Locus takes a breath, like he wants to say something, from behind him, but ultimately, he doesn’t. He exhales, instead, and then he leaves, taking slow, steady steps out of the kitchen back to his bedroom.

Felix drops his shoulders after Locus shuts his room door, the tension leaving him in a rush.

He panicked over nothing. An unwarranted, uncharacteristic burst of concern. Over what? Some… stupid visual indicator about… soulmates and the assumption that he was losing something he doesn’t even halfway care about.

Locus should have responded with an angry rebuttal - it’s his body, his right to get up and tool around if he’s so sick of lying around. Felix knows if he was in the same position, he’d get tired of lying around and try to get up as well. He’d have snapped at Locus for trying to stop him.

Now Locus knows something is off. There’s going to be a conversation that Felix isn’t sure he wants to have, about a topic he’s rejected for years and years.

A conversation he resolved never to have.

Felix rests his head against the cabinet in front of him.

He wishes he had never started to see in reds and greens among the greys.

Beside him, the kettle starts to whistle.


	3. Chapter 3

Locus doesn’t say anything when Felix comes in to drop off his tea.

To be fair, Felix doesn’t give him much of a chance to say anything, stalking in quickly, face determinedly blank, setting it down quickly and leaving just as quick.

He pauses, just once, when he sets the mug down.

He’s not sure if it’s a trick of the light, but the green of the ceramic looks deeper, fuller, somehow, once he sets it down by Locus’ bedside.

He retreats before he can think too much of it.

Locus’ stare burrows into the back of his head as he goes

* * *

 

Felix avoids Locus for the day. It’s easy to, now that he knows Locus is awake. He can hear, based on his steps, where he is, make reasonable enough estimates about his location in his room, what he’s doing. Locus is capable of taking quiet nearly silent strides, but while injured, and in the safety of their own apartment, stealth isn’t high on his list of priorities. The sound of the doors makes it easy to know when Locus goes into the kitchen, when he goes into his bathroom, when he returns to his room. After that it’s a matter of not being in the rooms Locus happens to be in at that moment.

Avoiding Locus is easy.

Avoiding his own thoughts is not.

While Locus was asleep, it was easy to push the thoughts aside, avoid dwelling on they ‘why’ and the ‘what now’. Easy to focus instead on the simple ‘what happened’ and nothing else, because the other involved party wasn’t in any condition to discuss it with him.

But now that Locus is awake, Felix is suddenly struck by how immediate everything is, the whole problem, the uncertain realization that he has a soulmate, and what, if anything, he has to do now that he does.

It’s Locus. It has to be Locus. He was looking at Locus when it happened, and everyone else he met that day was fleeting, inconsequential, or now dead.

And if they’re dead they’re not even candidates for what it is that went on.

Except some things don’t make sense, and others imply things he’s not sure he wants to ponder.

Chromatic adjustment is triggered by a first - first meeting, first touch, first kiss, first… something. Something significant. This wasn’t any of that. This isn’t Locus’ first time getting injured, isn’t the first time Felix watched him get blasted, not the first time he worked with him, locked eyes with him while he’s bleeding out.

So what triggered it?

And did it trigger for Locus like it did for Felix? Because Felix remembers, he froze - it’s not something you don’t notice, a flood of red in a visual landscape of grey. Locus didn’t react at all. He’s not that good of an actor. He couldn’t have failed to notice, failed to react to it, even injured.

So what does that mean?

Did Locus not undergo adjustment at all? Does he still see in grey?

Or did he already adjust to it, has he seen in colour before Felix ever saw that ugly trail of of red leaking out of his wound, and just never found it fit to tell Felix what he was, what they were?

Felix doesn’t like that thought. It’s less likely, but it unsettles him far more than the thought that Locus is still colour blind.

Because it would mean Locus has kept the knowledge of it from him, and he hadn’t noticed, all this time he’s known him, and he wouldn’t know anything at all about what Locus wants.

He pushes that thought aside, every time it crops up.

Ultimately, the question he always wonders is: what will it all mean?

This question is the most uncertain of all, and even thinking briefly of it makes him uncertain, makes him uneasy, unsure, and anxious about any changes that might have to happen to reconcile what it all is.

Will it mean their partnership has to change now? He may not be a fan of soul bonds and forever afters, but he’s not ignorant of it. A bond is something big, something significant. You can’t ignore it, because there’s so much that comes with it, colour vision aside. It’s a tether, a bond, an understanding of someone who’s supposed to fit in your life - a profound emotional connection.

A soulmate is there from the moment you meet them until the day they die - and the world is different before you meet them, and changes again if they leave.

Felix doesn’t know if he’s ready for anything like that.

He doesn’t know if a soul bond would change their working partnership - if it would strengthen it, or compromise it. Would it force them to work closer together, force them to split their work apart? He’s not sure if he wants it, not sure how Locus would react to it.

Worst of all he’s not sure if he’d be alright if Locus finds out, and decides he’d rather reject it.

It shouldn’t scare him - after all, he was adamant he didn’t want one - but now…

Now he’s unsure.

And he hates that he is.

* * *

 

He avoids a full day of interacting with Locus, outside of walking in and out of his room to pass him takeout, deliver food, water, at whatever intervals works for him, but the confinement of the apartment, the growing pile of his uncertain thoughts, the spiral of overthinking in such a small place… it gets to him.

He can’t sit still and he can’t stay handle the small space, not while Locus is next door, ignorant of everything going through his mind, ignorant of what Felix has been seeing, ignorant of the knowledge that Felix is aware they may be (are) soulmates.

His thoughts keep him up in the night and make it hard to focus on doing anything during the day. Halfway through the morning, he can’t focus on reassembling his sniper rifle, distracted at every turn by errant thoughts and worries, the growing pit of anxiety in his stomach. He sets the gun down instead, frowns at it and all its pieces.

Then he gets up, avoids scattering the metal pieces of the weapon, kicks his closet door open, and rummages for a fresh set of clothes.

He needs to get out.

* * *

 

Locus’ door is open when he passes, as a sign to Felix he can enter, an assurance he’s alive, or just because he forgot to shut it before he went to bed, Felix isn’t sure, but he spares a glimpse in, just to see if Locus seems alright.

He’s still asleep, on his side, as he prefers, breathing quietly, steadily. There’s a data pad on the bed, maybe what he’s been using to pass the time, and his green mug sits merrily on the side, next to the lamp.

He should be fine.

Felix doesn’t spare more time to see, Locus might wake up if he walks in, and he’s not sure he wants to wake him, so he looks in, passes by, and leaves.

He doesn’t leave a note. If Locus needs him, he can call.

* * *

 

As soon as he’s outside, Felix picks a direction and walks. He doesn’t know where he intends to go, or if there is anywhere to go. All he knows is needs some space, to think without four walls closing in, and the maybe cause of his frustrations and anxieties lying around in the next room, so he aims to go and walk and think.

The streets are grey, in the mid-morning, but bright with the light of the sun. His eyes catch the occasional flash of muted red, as trucks pass, as he walks past signs in store fronts displaying wares, on parts of clothing as pedestrians walk by. It’s harder to notice now, hidden behind a haze of grey.

So different from when he first realized he was seeing it, no longer the bright arresting hue of life.

He still doesn’t know why the colour faded, washed out back into the normal landscape of grey.

Research provided no adequate answers.

The green, though, remains bright and present. Attention-grabbing beacons, as he passes trees, their leaves a plethora of all shades of green - darker and lighter and greyer and brighter.

He stops by a park, three blocks from the apartment, looking in the gate.

It’s a sea of green, grass covering the space, leaves stretching high from branches to greet the light, blotches of grey of people strolling by, small hints of red in the collar of a dog and its leash, the gloves of a child, the plastic playground structures.

He turns away and walks past.

It’s a little jarring on the eyes.

* * *

 

He wanders a while, hands in his pockets, taking step after step down the city streets, tracking moving blots of colour as they pass - a car here, a pedestrian’s jacket there, a sign in green, a notice in red.

His feet move on autopilot, navigating the cityscape, and he lets his mind wander to what it has wanted to ponder for days.

Is the reason why he can only see green and red because Locus isn’t aware of it? Or is it because it happened at the wrong time? Did Locus getting injured trigger it, or did his panic after it stop its course after revealing only two hues of colour to his sight? Or is it because there’s something wrong with him, with his brain, his eyes?

Will he be forced to see in greys and only two colours for the rest of his life? Or will it eventually advance? Recede back to simple greys?

He’s not sure what he’d prefer. It’s been a few days, but after knowing red is red and green is green, he’s not sure how he’d feel to lose the knowledge.

And what of Locus?

What _of_ Locus?

Felix’s thoughts jumble as he darts around a woman and her dog, strides past a blind man waving his walking stick, falls in line, in pace, behind a businesswoman walking quickly, the click of her heels on the concrete keeping his steps in time.

Does Locus know? Can Locus see?

Would Locus want to know?

Does he care?

For once Felix curses that he doesn’t know what Locus feels about the whole concept of soul mates, of seeing in colour, of chromatic adjustment and relationships that tie everything together.

Before it was good, because he never had to confront the concept, accepted he’d never have to deal with it, so he didn’t have to care about it, and he knew Locus would never bring it up.

Now it’s an inconvenience, because he doesn’t know what Locus thinks of the idea, doesn’t know if he would want one, doesn’t know if he’d be repulsed by one.

It worries him.

Because what if Locus reacts poorly? How drastically would everything change?

Because even if he’s not sure if he wants Locus as a soulmate, he’s sure at the least, he’d like to keep Locus as a partner.

They work well together. He doesn’t want to lose that.

Does he?

Felix stops, pausing on the street with a frown.

What is a soulmate anyway? What does it mean to have one? What relationship does that entail?

He doesn’t know.

Someone bumps into him as they pass, and Felix turns to glare as they go by, biting back the scathing remark he wants to make about their eyesight, their coordination, their gait.

He looks away, instead, taking in the street, its landmarks. He isn’t sure how far he walked while his mind spun in circles around repeating patterns and questions and thoughts.

He doesn’t recognize much, but there’s a mosque at the end of the boulevard, and that, at least he does recognize, knows how to navigate home from there.

There are a number of little cafes lining one side of the road, a mechanic’s garage down another corner, and a soulmate matchmaking and consultancy service across the street.

Felix grimaces reflexively when he spots it. It looks garish, the front decorated with promises of timely matches and love and relationship advice. Cut outs of hearts and other romantic symbols, tinted just slightly washed out red and lightish red under the grey of his vision.

He makes to turn away in disgust and leave, before he pauses.

 _“What is a soulmate?”_ he wondered earlier, _“What does it mean to have one?”_.

Wouldn’t this be somewhere he can learn a little more?

He frowns. He probably wouldn’t find the answers he’s looking for - he’s fully aware of what places like these offer.

But it’s as good a place as any to start.

* * *

 

The place looks halfway busy, for the hour of day. There’s a number of booths set up to the side, with some consultants sitting in, speaking with whoever is looking for service, a waiting area, with people holding little paper tickets, a monitor on the wall displaying ticket numbers and booth numbers.

The reception desk is empty, to the side of it is an array of information pamphlets.

Felix turns away from the prospect of speaking to a matchmaking ‘consultant’. He’s not here for advice he doesn’t need, he’s here for information.

The pamphlets are probably the better bet.

Felix starts with the top left stack and moves across and down, scanning the titles to see if any might be helpful.

“What is a soul mate” starts promising, but ends being empty drivel. It offers little more than what Felix already knows, from mere exposure to the concept through media, the internet, past discussions with other people.

A soul mate is someone who completes you, loves you, makes up the other half of your life.

Somehow that’s supposed to be an answer, without further clarification or thought to answer further questions.

“How to find” is useless, Felix already knows who it is. Similarly, ‘How to improve my chances” and “how do I know they’re mine?”

He gives “Fostering a Relationship” a try, but finds it unhelpful, because all it outlines is things he’d probably never do right off the bat, romantic actions he’s not fond of, unsure Locus would ever accept.

“What is a soul bond” doesn’t describe anything in detail, only the promise of something full, only encourages that the reader should find their soulmate, encourage connection, use the services provided by the matchmaking service to help if they need it.

He pauses momentarily, when he sees “How do I Keep my Soulmate?”, because it’s the only one that gives any indication that a soul bond might not be everlasting, but even that does little but encourage the reader to keep trying, hold onto it, try couples therapy and other consultancy services to save it, because to lose it would be devastating.

All of them promise something idyllic, romantic, everlasting - something that happens suddenly, is equally acknowledged at the start, and reinforced by love, romance, sex. Something you don’t want to ignore, or stunt the growth of, or lose.

It’s too perfect.

It all seems fake.

There’s a pamphlet on chromatic adjustment as well, but it doesn’t tell him anything more than the paper he found on the internet. There’s a colour legend on the back, but still, all the circles are varying shades of grey, the names meaningless, save for the washed out greying red, and vibrant glowing green.

This isn’t want he’s looking for. He’s not going to find any answers here.

“Can I help you?” a voice says, nearby, yanking him from his thoughts. Felix turns abruptly, looking away from the array of information pamphlets he was staring at, arranged in neat standing stacks on the display to the side of the reception help desk.

One of the employees of the matching service stands nearby, dressed in a nice light suit, the uniform of the place, smiling brightly. Hair styled and arranged, clothes neat and orderly. His name card is green, pinned onto the lapel of his grey-white suit. It reads “Charles”.

Felix stares, straightens, takes half a step back. “No,” he says simply.

He’s not here for a boxed up explanation about a marketed product of what soul bonds mean or what they ‘should’ be, how they should manifest, how to tell when it is happening, what to do.

He’s not interested in a neatly packaged, lovey-dovey happy ever after these services promise and offer. Even if Locus is interested in acknowledging the bond, the change in the relationship if Felix will bring it up, Felix knows this wouldn’t be Locus’ cup of tea either.

These people can’t help him.

“Thanks,” he says, as an afterthought, though he doesn’t mean it. He takes a chromatic adjustment pamphlet as he turns his back on the man and leaves. At the least, he can make use of the colour legend on the back.

* * *

 

He eats a late lunch at one of the cafes on the street, simple soup and salad, then indulges in some coffee and cake.

While he eats, he studies the grey circles on the colour legend, tries to see if he can make other colours make themselves known if he concentrates, tries to see if he can match greys between the pamphlet and the street to guess what greys outside are actually a given colour.

It’s a waste of time, ultimately.

Concentration yields nothing more. All there is, still, in his vision, is green and fading red and grey.

The waitress smiles at him when she spots the colour legend on the table.

Felix resists the urge to frown at her when she gathers up his utensils and sweeps back inside.

At least she doesn’t try to hold conversation beyond tending to his table and his needs.

He tips her decently and leaves, pockets the pamphlet as he goes.

* * *

 

He sits outside for a while, after, on a waist high wall separating the street from a private courtyard.

It’s not really necessary, he thinks, to really acknowledge the bond.

Sure, he sees in grey and red and green, but it’s not too bad.

He doesn’t have to bring it up with Locus, especially if he doesn’t know, can’t see. There’s too much uncertainty, anyhow.

What if Locus can’t see, if Felix reveals he can, wouldn’t that just make Locus resent him, confuse him? If he even cares?

As it is, he likes their arrangement as it is. Change throws too much out of balance, the potential of them being soul mates, acknowledging the bond, risks taking a step neither of them are prepared for, makes it harder for them to retain professional distance.

The potential it might fall apart throws risks ruining the professional relationship, would create unfavourable working conditions, throw them out of sync during dangerous jobs, would create more hardship than benefits.

He can ignore it. There’s no need to rush. If Locus doesn’t say anything, he won’t either.

That’s easy, and keeps things alright.

Somehow the thought doesn’t sit well with him.

Felix tucks his right leg up against his chest, tapping the left heel of his combat boots against he brick of the wall.

If he’s honest… he’s a little curious about colour.

He’s not too opposed to acknowledging the bond, trying… something new with the partnership. He likes Locus. He’s not sure if he likes him that much, but he can learn to, he’s open to trying.

He just doesn’t want to risk losing the partnership, his livelihood, their comfortable arrangement.

He’d be hard pressed to find a partner he can work with as well as he does Locus.

He sighs, after a moment, hopping off the wall.

It’s been a couple hours. Maybe he should head back.

He turns towards the mosque at the end of the boulevard and starts to walk home.

* * *

 

On the way back he stops outside a flower shop. It’s not far from the apartment, maybe four, five blocks. It’s a small place, sandwiched between a law firm and a deli restaurant.

He only notices it because it was an impossible to ignore beacon of shades upon shades of green, suddenly appearing on his left among the regular shades of grey.

Dozens of different shapes of leaves, long and round and feathered and curled, in a dozen different shades of green, cushioning white and grey and black blooms of flowers.

He can’t help but wonder: if there is this much variety in a single hue of colour, what would the world would look like if every single colour in every variety were visible to him?

“Adjusting, are you?” a voice asks, as he ponders, staring into the shop and its meticulous arrangements of pots of flowers and plants.

Felix gives a start at the sound, shaking his head free of his idle thoughts and turning to find the source inside the store, “No, I–”

An old woman emerges from the shadows of the store, giving a gentle smile, gesturing at her front display, “You’ve been looking a long while at the leaves,”

Felix gives her an affronted look, “What, is that weird or something?” he asks, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Yes,” the woman replies easily, tapping her cane on the ground, nudging an errant hose aside, “Often people look more at the flowers.”

Felix doesn’t say anything, gaze darting down to the grey blooms, before trailing down the long reaching expanse of the leaf under it. He tears his gaze away from the green to look back at the woman inside.

“Unless they’re new to the green,” she finishes, with a knowing smile, tilting her head.

Felix blinks, “You see in colour then?” he asks, nonchalant, though he can’t help but be curious.

She’s the first one he’s met in a long time who can.

That he knows of.

“Ah yes,” she says, agreeably, turning to walk back in, and Felix follows, willing to follow this distraction, in hopes of maybe learning more, “Most florists do,” she says, bending over a small arrangement of blooms to pick off one of two dead flowers, “Nobody really likes to tend to flowers until they’ve seen what they look like under the full spectrum. Far more interesting once you’ve seen all the shades and hues.”

“Must be nice,” Felix says, at a loss to say anything else.

“Well,” she says with a little huff, “You’ll get an eyeful, sooner or later.”

She sounds so sure.

“…Maybe,” Felix replies, though what he means is no. She can’t know that. She doesn’t even know him.

“Oh? Bond not working out?” she asks, and Felix blinks.

How could she have known?

Felix feels caught off guard, uncertain, and he doesn’t like it. Being at a disadvantage, “That’s not really your business, actually,” he remarks, mood soured, and turns to leave.

“…Do they know?” she asks, before he can take a step to go.

Felix pauses, turns back, “I don’t…” he flounders. Wonders why he walked in, “Why are you talking to me again?”

“Oh, forgive an old woman her curiosity,” she says, with a gentle non-threatening wave of her hand, “Not so many people see in colour, nowadays. Not since the war.”

Oh, so she’s lonely then. Looking for a connection over something she might have in common.

Felix relaxes, slightly, “War’s over,” he comments plainly.

“Perhaps,” she sighs, “but still, billions of lives, gone. How many who could have died, and how many who might have been able have now lost the chance?”

It’s sad when she puts it like that.

A little.

“…You know, they figured out mid twenty-first century it’s not actually one to one like everybody likes to think,” Felix responds, regurgitating some fruits of his internet research from some days previous. He doesn’t know why he’s bothering to share, but he might as well entertain her, just for a little longer, show at least, that he knows what he’s talking about, “More like a compatibility thing. Pretty sure nobody would ever find their match otherwise.”

“Bah,” the old crone says, dismissively, turning away to fuss with some other blooms, and Felix resists the urge to make a face at the dismissal, “I’m an old-fashioned romantic. Still, it’s few among billions - still something just a little less than common. Chances are,” she says, turning back to point at him, “Rare enough to be special.”

Felix shrugs, “…Maybe,” he concedes. Special doesn’t necessarily mean anything significant. Just less likely to happen.

The woman ‘tsks’, giving him a good natured frown as she strides back over, “You’re awfully under-enthused for a young man undergoing chromatic adjustment.” She sounds scolding.

Felix takes a step back as she approaches, unsure about how he feels about being lectured good-naturedly by a stranger, “…I’m adjusting,” he mutters as an excuse, “I didn’t expect it.”

He’s not sure why he’s being honest with her. Maybe he figures she can give him some answers. At the least, she speaks from experience, rather than expectation.

“No one ever does,” she says, gently, “It’s often a matter of letting it run its course.”

Felix frowns, glancing down, then back up, “…What if I don’t let it?” he asks, quietly.

He’s not sure why he thinks she would have an answer, but this has probably been the most promising talk he’s had in the past few days.

There’s no harm in letting it go on a bit longer.

“Why wouldn’t you?” she asks. She sounds only a little shocked, but manages not to sound judgemental about it. Felix appreciates the effort.

“Maybe someone doesn’t want to,” he shrugs.

Locus might not want to.

He might not want to.

He’s not sure about himself, if he’s honest.

The woman blinks, tucks an errant strand of white back behind her hear, “Has your match not started undergoing adjustment?” she asks.

Felix shrugs, “…I don’t know,” he answers honestly, “Not even sure if this thing is actually legit,” he continues, giving a little laugh after it.

It doesn’t sound sincere.

There’s a brief pause, as Felix fiddles with the zipper of his pocket, and the old woman considers her words. She nods after a moment, and turns to consider some other blooms as she talks, “Sometimes a pair doesn’t experience chromatic adjustment at the same time.”

Felix stops fiddling, swallows as he absorbs what she just said. “…Is that possible?” he asks, quietly.

Because if it is, it would explain so much.

“Oh, yes,” she responds, easily, clipping a leaf and moving onto the next plant. Her tone is even and sure, as if she’s speaking from experience, “It’s not a precise science.”

Felix frowns, taking a step closer, “Yeah, but the literature is pretty consistent,” he says, waving his hand absently, “First meeting, eye contact, first touch, all that fluffy stuff.”

The woman hums, “Well, it’s all in the mind, isn’t it?” she points out, “The perception of colour? Of love.”

Felix wrinkles his nose.

Love. Whatever that means.

“If someone isn’t open to the idea,” she continues, tossing another leaf before she turns back to face him, “Wouldn’t it make sense that the brain becomes blind to the possibility.?”

Felix blinks, shoving his hands back into his pockets.“…Not sure that’s how it works, lady,” he says, even as he considers what she’s just said, turning it over in his head.

Because it does make sense.

Kind of.

“Ah well,” she responds, with the ease of someone who isn’t too insistent on being listened to, “You don’t have to believe me. What do I know? I’m just an old florist who happens to be able to see in colour. Perhaps I’d just like to talk,” she says with a little laugh, and a wink, “After all, it’s rare to meet another who can see what it is I can.”

Felix offers a brief smile. He’s mildly surprised to know it’s a little sincere. He shakes his head, “I can’t see what you can.”

“But you will,” the woman says, certain, “One day.”

“I _might_ ,” Felix retorts, preferring to stick to the rational, not the optimistic, “There’s a difference.”

“No,” she says again, just as sure as she was before, “You will.”

Felix can’t find the motivation to refute her.

What if she’s right?

He doesn’t say anything instead.

“You should talk to them,” she continues, after a moment, “Your uncertain companion,” she clarifies, when Felix doesn’t make any indication that he understood.

“Who’s to say we haven’t already talked?” he responds.

It’s a weak deflection.

She knows it.

“You’re a man who doesn’t care for flowers entertaining an old crone on her notions of romance in a failing florist shop,” she points out, “It’s easy to see you’re avoiding something you ought to be doing.”

Felix finds himself unable to form a rebuttal to that. She read him pretty well. So he comments on her failing business instead. “…Sorry about your business.”

“Ah, well,” the woman sighs, unbothered, “This is just a hobby, mainly. It’s a little unfortunate, perhaps, but expected, in a world where not many can see the full glory of the blooms.”

Felix quirks his lip, “Not worried at all about losing money, are you?”

“Don’t have long left to live,” she responds, and Felix feels a brief momentary sense of melancholy, upon hearing that.

It fades quickly.

“And, well,” she continues, “My husband left me far more than I need to survive until my dying day. Don’t you worry.”

“I’m not,” Felix responds, honestly. “You still see in colour?” he asks, instead of dwelling on her limited time left, looking to satisfy his curiosity rather than comfort her and her knowledge of her failing health, “Even though…” he trails off.

“Love lasts beyond the grave,” she responds simply.

That can’t be it. Everyone knows the colour goes when the soulmate dies.

“…or you just believe that,” Felix mutters.

She smiles, ignores his unwarranted comment, “Stop avoiding who you shouldn’t,” she orders, “Perhaps then you’ll see more than just green.”

“I can see more than green,” Felix retorts, petulantly, though she couldn’t have known that.

“See, you’re developing already,” she says, and Felix tries not to feel like he just lost a debate, “Take a flower when you go,” she says, turning back to her blooms to signal the end of the conversation, “My treat.”

Felix eyes the grey flowers. None of them look really appealing. “No thanks,” he says, “Not really my thing.”

The woman pauses in her work, the only indication of her disappointment.

Felix tries not to feel bad for rejecting the offer.

“But thanks, for…” he shrugs awkwardly, gestures emptily, “Yeah.”

The woman takes a small breath, then picks out a couple stems from a pot of white flowers, clipping them free and walking right up to him. Felix stares at her, unsure of what she’s doing.

She taps the stems together and walks over to him, pressing them into his chest, “Go on,” she says, as he reflexively grabs the green stems, avoids crushing the leaves in his hand, “For good luck.” She pats him once on the chest, then steps back.

Felix looks down at the flowers. Three stems, seven flowers. They’re white, each flower with five petals, splayed out like little stars. The stems are light green, the leaves, a little darker.

He frowns, “Don’t need it,” he says, but he keeps his hold on them anyway, dropping his hand to his side.

“That’s the spirit,” the woman says absently as she turns back into the depths of her shop, wandering back in to continue tending to her blooms.

Felix watches her only a moment longer.

Then he turns and leaves.

It’s time to go home. He’s been out too long as it is.

* * *

 

Locus is asleep when Felix gets back to their shared apartment hideaway, but he’s been awake, while Felix was away avoiding him and the conspicuous accents of colour that brighten in his unconscious presence, hurting the younger man’s eyes as the hues draw his attention. There is still tea, in Locus’ favoured mug, a bright forest green spot sitting in the center of the kitchen table, surrounded by a room of whites and blacks and greys - evidence that he’s left his room, before returning to it; moving about against doctor’s recommendation, again - and he’s changed his bandages, or what he could, as Felix can see when he checks his recovering partner over, after spotting the stained ribbons in the trash.

The red of the blood is dark, still mixed with grey, only a faint tint of colour that Felix can see, much unlike the bright spatters and bleeding hues of life that had shocked him and rendered him near-useless as he’d struggled to keep his partner from bleeding out, a week and an eternity ago.

He still hasn’t puzzled out why it is that, since then, the green has become brighter, but the reds have faded back to grey.

He ought to feel guilty, that he wasn’t around to help Locus when he’s injured, so Locus doesn’t have to wander around and exacerbate his condition to keep himself alive.

He doesn’t.

In any case, Locus doesn’t like it when he tries to help.

He dumps the tea out of the mug, rinses it, fills the mug with water and drops the flowers into the cup, nudging them by the petals to arrange them so their white five-petal points look halfway presentable.

The mug is not a good makeshift vase, the green stems collapse against the sides and the flowers point down and out.

Whatever, they won’t last more than a few days, maybe. This is just to hold them for a bit. It just feels a little inappropriate to simply throw them out.

It’s late afternoon, bordering on evening, judging by the time, and the dying light. He doesn’t know how long Locus has been asleep, how long it’s been since he apparently got up, what he did in that time while Felix was away, counting shades of green in the city, trying to see if he could see other hues if he tried hard enough to concentrate, and as he struggled to put together his thoughts about what it all meant, for him, and for Locus, and for their partnership, in all possible meanings of the word.

A whole day of thinking, and he still isn’t quite sure what he wants, or what it means, or what even it is that he feels about everything - the situation, the apparent presence of some deeper fantastic bond that took its sweet time appearing, about Locus, most of all.

What he does know, now, though, is that this is something that will need to be puzzled out by two, not him alone.

He takes the mug with its pitiful flowers with him to Locus’ room, sets them on the side table under the bedside lamp. Then he takes a seat at the bedside of his slumbering partner and watches his still form as he sorts through his thoughts and waits.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s late in the evening when Locus wakes with a quiet breath of sound, eyes blinking open in the dull light of the bedside lamp Felix had turned on so he could see.

Felix stops picking his nails with the chromatic adjustment information pamphlet when he spots the movement in the corner of his vision, straightening his back as he drops the paper to the floor, surreptitiously so Locus doesn’t catch sight of what it was he was reading.

Locus blinks blearily at him, sitting up and glancing briefly at the clock on the side table, clarity returning quickly to his eyes as Felix turns away, mechanically, staring ahead at the window at the other side of the room, pulling his gaze, reluctantly, away from the faint flecks of green in his partner’s eyes.

“Felix,” he says, simply, in acknowledgement, but likely equally in question. Felix never sits idly by when he’s recovering. Neither of them do, for each other, Felix too frenetic to sit still, Locus too guarded to stay close, neither amenable to the other sitting by in some apologetic gesture for injuries received. The fact Felix is, after all, sitting by, and has been for a while now, is probably surprising, enough to alert Locus to something different, that Felix is unsettled by something, or that something is wrong.

That’s besides the obvious questions he still has, about Felix’s outburst the day previous - his uncharacteristic expression of angry concern.

For an awkward moment, there’s just a confused silence, as Locus asks what he’s doing without words, and Felix fails to answer, thoughts still jumbled in a confused cloud of uncertainty about where to start.

Felix looks down at his hands, unsure, fiddling with his fingers, chewing on his lip as Locus leans back against the headboard, patient as he waits for Felix to figure out where to begin.

“…Your eyes are green,” Felix decides on, finally, after a long, uncertain silence, gaze flickering once to Locus’ eyes before darting away again, as if the colour unsettles him.

Locus just blinks, unconsciously straightening his posture, wincing once when the movement bothers his injuries. Aside from the brief reaction to pain, there are no other signs of surprise, or emotion. Merely the brief widening of eyes, breath paused by pain before it resumes, same as before. Felix doesn’t have any means of checking his pulse, with his small distance.

Felix doesn’t outwardly acknowledge his movement, more preoccupied with the silence in the room, as Locus waits and listens.

“Well, they’re grey, mostly,” Felix continues, when the silence starts to bother him, rambling on to fill the quiet, “which is kind of lame, I gotta say, I mean, the buildup through all this and… chromatic adjustment and everything… and it turns out you don’t have much colour there,” he laughs, a quiet half-hearted sound, turning back to look at Locus, “Like, all the stupid romantics who write this shit go on about the eyes or the hair and with you, it’s…” he gestures absently at his partner, “you know, kind of a downer.”

Locus doesn’t answer in words, but deadpan expression says more than enough, eyes moving briefly in a half-hearted roll at Felix’s choice of words. Felix turns away, feeling the subtle burn of embarrassment, even as the familiar tired motion of Locus’ eyes comforts him, easing the tension out of his frame while Locus silently judges him for maybe wanting to see more than what flecks of colour he had to offer.

“Oh fuck off,” Felix mutters, and Locus’ lip twitches in mild amusement, the tension between them breaking and fading away to make room for quiet familiarity, “It’s… I’m dealing with it, okay?”

Locus waits a beat before speaking, letting Felix relax a little more before he moves the conversation along, “So,” he says, quietly, a little hoarsely, “you see…?” he trails off, finding the rest of the his words unnecessary to convey the rest of the question.

Felix nods, briefly, “Yeah, I…” he pauses, unsure of how to finish the thought, before finishing, lamely with, “….yeah.”

“…Hm,” Locus says, simply, in response, and they drop back into awkward silence, unsure of where to go from here.

Felix frowns, frustrated that even talking with Locus isn’t helping him understand more, especially with how he’s so unresponsive in general, “…I just…” he says, with a huff, “I don’t get it.

Locus watches him carefully, waiting for him to continue as Felix taps his thumbs on the bed and arranges his words in order.

“I’ve known you for years, Locus,” Felix points out, leaning back, scraping his nails into the covers, “We met years ago, and, sure, after the war we didn’t see much of each other for a bit, but now we work together and…” he shrugs, waving a hand absently through the air, “I’ve seen your face tons of times, we’ve touched, tons of times… so, why now?”

Locus takes a breath, and says, to Felix’s disappointment, “…I don’t know.”

“It’s supposed to be first sight,” Felix continues, brow furrowing with Locus’ inability to give him an answer, crossing his arms on the bed, “First touch?” he asks, “First… something. I… we’ve had a lot of firsts, already, Locus. Why is this… now?”

“I don’t know,” Locus repeats, glancing down at Felix’s hands, where they draw lines into the sheets with his nails.

“You are not helpful at all,” Felix huffs, wringing the covers in his hands.

“I know as little as you do, Felix,” Locus points out, reasonably, and Felix frowns, a little bit chided with the realization that he’d failed to realize the possibility that Locus wouldn’t know anything either.

“How long have you seen in colour, anyway?” Felix asks, after a moment, the question he’d wondered briefly for a time. While Felix had frozen at the the blooming stains of red when he first began to see, Locus hadn’t reacted at all like there was a sudden shift in his vision. At first, Felix wasn’t sure that Locus had undergone adjustment at all, that maybe it was just him for which it had triggered, but now, with the conversation as it’s gone, his lack of reaction to Felix’s subtle, should-have-been-a-shock reveal, it’s clear Locus has gone through it, at least prior to this awkward talk.

Locus confirms that by not answering, instead tugging at the covers, as he stares past Felix at the foot of the bed.

“Locus,” Felix presses, leaning in so his partner has to look at him, nervous, suddenly, with Locus’ reluctance to answer..

Locus stares a moment, gaze running over his face, stopping at the piercings on his brow, the beauty mark under his eye, trailing down his cheek, his nose, his lips.

Felix waits, patiently, as his partner steels his resolve, and looks back up into his eyes.

“Since the day I first met you, Felix,” he says, quietly, tone and gaze and voice steady as he speaks.

Felix feels it, then, the stutter of his heart at the revelation, the spread of warmth through his chest at the realization that Locus has known for _years_ what they could have, that first moment Felix had been reassigned to his squadron, a cocky delinquent good enough with a gun and a knife that the army wanted him sorted out rather than thrown to the wolves to buy time for their better soldiers. He struggles with the confused shuffle in his mind, the unwarranted embarrassment as he realizes that he was the slow one, still blind while Locus adjusted alone to his new sense of sight, in the middle of a war, knowing that every day, all it would take was one unlucky shot, one mistimed move, one mistake, and that bloom of colour would have meant nothing after all.

Nobody in their squad was supposed to be colour-sighted.

Locus could _see_ , and kept pretending he couldn’t. And even after the war ended, continuing pretending he was colour blind.

Why?

“Oh,” he says, dumbly, leaning back in surprise as he adjusts his understanding of what it all means, grapples with the growing confusion he can’t puzzle out..

Locus reads his shock, perhaps too much his discomfort, reaching to tug on his forearm, to grab his attention before he gets lost in his mind, “It doesn’t have to mean anything,” he assures him, tonelessly. It’s hard to know what he’s thinking, as he stares Felix down, trying, perhaps, to keep him from acting rashly or retreating.

Felix laughs, a little forced, a little uncertain, “Don’t be an idiot, Locus,” he says, with an uncertain grin, “how can it not? Everything’s… different,” he finishes, uncertain, gaze drawn again to the colours in his vision, popping out among the greys.

It is, clearly. Everything is different. Not only that he sees differently, that his physical perception of things has now changed, but also the situation, potentially their relationship. Felix has been struggling to understand, considering the idea of how it could all work for a a few hours, maybe a few days. Locus had been struck with the realization of what Felix could be to him, then kept it under wraps for _years._

It explains, a little, how easy it had been for him, to shield Felix from the blast at the risk of his own life. It does not explain why he’d kept it quiet for so long. Felix doesn’t quite know, and he’s a little afraid of knowing, what it is that Locus thinks of him, why he would prefer to hide it away rather than bring it to light.

“No, everything just looks different,” Locus continues, voice firm, grip a little tight, but steady, mostly, and warm, “You’ll adjust,” he assures him, and the words do little but make Felix more uncertain.

Because what does that even mean? He’ll learn to ignore it? This so called earth-shattering realization? That it doesn’t mean anything, the burst of colour into his life, brief highlights of red and green wherever he looks, the supposed blooming of the development of a bond that could - should - will mean something, the supposed element of love, a lasting relationship - that everybody knows, that supposedly people yearn for.

Has this been Locus’ thoughts regarding the matter all this time? Is this how he’s coped with it since the start?

Does Locus not care, really, at all, what it all means?

Felix swallows, feels a worm of discontent wriggle in the back of his throat at that. Then he buries it, quickly, after all, didn’t he too consider adjusting quietly to it earlier in the week?

Can he just do that? He wonders, as Locus holds on and keeps him rooted in the now.

Do I want to do that? He asks himself, as he considers the warmth of Locus’ touch, the bloom of heat in his chest, the ever slight quickened beat of his heart, the uncertain buzz in his mind.

After all, he’s fond of their partnership. He’s comfortable with what they do, how they work. He’s not sure he wants to risk losing that yet. He’s not a solitary person, and Locus has been… good company throughout the years, despite his obstinate and nitpicky attitude. He’s not sure he wants things to change.

At the same time, he’s not sure if he doesn’t want things to change after all.

“Like you did?” he asks Locus, quietly, meeting the other man’s steady gaze with his uncertain own.

Locus blinks, a little taken aback, perhaps at his question, perhaps at the uncertainty in his tone, “…Nothing has to change, Felix,” he reiterates quietly, tonelessly. He’s intent. Too much so.

“Right…” Felix mutters, easing his arm from Locus’ grip, “That’s the thing though…” he says, feels his uncertainty gather in the beat of his heart, the clammy feel of his palms.

Locus tilts his head in question, pulling his arm back as he relinquishes his grip.

“I’m not sure that I don’t want things to change,” Felix admits, quietly, gaze flickering up to his bedridden partner before darting away, unwilling to watch too carefully if Locus reacts negatively.

He doesn’t. Instead, looks on, with a considering look, that is so frustratingly blank of any cues Felix could read, though, to be fair, Felix finds it hard to look him in the eye as he does it, “What do you want, Felix?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never…” Felix fumbles with words, uncertainly, gesturing in small frustrated motions, “I’ve never thought about this. Ever.”

Locus nods in understanding, waits for him to continue.

“But it means something, right?” Felix dares to ask, turning back to look at his partner, “This should be a big deal. Meet your soulmate, see in colour, blah blah blah. This is a forever thing or… something,” he growls, frustrated, raising a hand to his head, “I don’t know, the information isn’t really clear.”

“Nothing is so simple,” Locus says. Empty words that say the obvious. Felix hates it, the non-committal answers, the cautious tone, the obvious lack of initiative Locus has in advancing the conversation.

“Do you even care?” Felix blurts out, with frustration, narrowing his eyes to glare at Locus’ bandaged form, tension flooding back into his frame.

Locus visibly reels back, startled at the sudden aggression, looking confused as Felix struggles to voice his thoughts clearly.

“I mean, you’ve seen in…” Felix sputters, “full colour or whatever for years, if you’re telling the truth,” he gestures at Locus, waving aggressively at him, “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Locus hesitates, the seconds ticking by as he gathers his thoughts, processes Felix’s outburst.

Maybe he didn’t expect Felix to want to know.

Maybe he didn’t expect him to care.

“…I thought you would,” Locus says, after a moment. And Felix frowns, because why would he? There was nothing to say before now. Things were… normal, before.

“I’ve never…” Locus stops himself, pauses to rearrange his thoughts, “I’ve never been forward about this sort of thing,” he admits, quietly.

Felix nods. He’s fully aware of it. Locus has never been overtly friendly, shared affection by being slightly more overbearing, slightly less cold. Friendship was shared with verbal barbs, snappy banter, and a reluctance to hurt the other, not with discussions of feelings or… displays of affection. Locus has never been great with people. Felix knows.

“Then it became clear you didn’t…”

 _Oh_. Felix thinks, and he feels his brow lose its hard angry downturn.

Because Locus went through this too, years ago, a paradigm shift brought on by a visual change, and no indications from the person who caused it that it meant anything, or would mean anything, despite all the popular and common ideas of what it _should_ all mean.

“You’re far from an affectionate person, Felix,” Locus says, and the words parse their way through the strange sensation of guilt and rare empathetic understanding floating in Felix’s head, “I thought you’d never see.”

Felix looks down. He feels chided, somehow. These few days Locus has been the target of his confused mental frustrations, a figure he indirectly blamed for what he was feeling, what he was seeing, and his anxieties about what things would mean for himself, what he wanted for himself, their partnership.

Now it’s clear that Locus must have felt this before too, and lived with it resigned to the fact Felix wouldn’t ever care, despite whatever it was he decided he’d wanted from the partnership after all.

Until now.

They sit in silence a little longer, Felix unsure of what to say, Locus, perhaps, unwilling to say more, after his quiet confession.

After a moment, the silence becomes too much, so Felix talks, trying to set his thoughts in order as the words find their way out, “Someone told me that seeing or touching or whatever doesn’t always trigger chromatic adjustment,” he says, slowly, trying to remember what the old florist at the shop had said, “What’s important isn’t that you meet someone, it’s that both compatible parties are open to… something at the time of the meeting.”

Locus tilts his head. Felix isn’t sure, but he thinks maybe his breath picked up briefly, but it could just be a reaction to residual pain. He still has a stitched up hole in his side, after all.

“…and?” he asks, quietly.

Felix shrugs, avoiding Locus’ gaze, “I guess I hadn’t been open to such a dumb romantic notion.”

“Until now,” Locus says, putting the pieces together from what Felix doesn’t say.

Felix finds he doesn’t disagree with the assessment, his mouth moving to make a brief curve of a smile, “Apparently,” he concedes, running his thumbnail down the back of a finger.

He likes Locus. He doesn’t think he’ll be opting out of their work partnership any time soon.

Perhaps it was inevitable that he’d be okay with sticking with Locus for whatever reason beyond that.

“Hm…” Locus doesn’t say much in response. It’s likely he needs to think. This is a quiet revelation, maybe. Felix doesn’t know what he’s thinking, what he wants.

He ought to be worried about that. He finds he isn’t.

“Why’d you stick around, anyway?” Felix asks, after a moment. Curiosity getting the better of him, silence doing nothing to settle the sense of anticipation in his mind, “Business aside, because, well, you’d be hard pressed to find a better partner,” he says, self assured with a grin, “But aside from that, wasn’t it…” he shrugs a shoulder, “I don’t know, weird, working with me, living with me, knowing that I had no fucking idea? You saw it immediately. Obviously you were kind of into the idea, and I…” he pauses, can’t find a delicate word, “Wasn’t. ”

Locus sighs, fingers tapping over his covers.

He takes a moment to find his answer.

“The colours started fading when we parted ways after the war,” he starts by saying.

Felix listens.

“It seems silly, since I’d lived most my life without it until the war, but…” Locus’ gaze is arresting, Felix feels a little lost in it, the flecks of green in his irises, among the grey, “Losing it once you have it is far more difficult than never living with it at all.”

Felix grins, unsure of what Locus means, teases, instead in hopes it might relax him, the sense of tension he feels growing slightly as they keep talking, “You still talking about colour, or…?”

Locus doesn’t answer, he just stares and there’s suddenly too much in his eyes.

Felix feels silly for asking, can’t hold his gaze. “Ah,” he says.

“Do you see in full colour yet?” Locus asks, before Felix can think too much, draw too many conclusions from what Locus doesn’t say.

“Uh. No,” Felix responds, grateful for a change in topic, the brief distraction. The conversation is enlightening, but it’s hasn’t… done much to alleviate the confusion, the feeling of uncertainty he’s felt grow since everything started, with Locus bleeding in a scrap yard with a twist of metal in his side, “Not… no… Just… green. Red, sometimes.”

“So you haven’t seen yourself yet,” Locus concludes.

“Not in colour, if that’s what you’re asking,” Felix responds.

Locus hums.

“I’m missing out, then,” Felix says with a huff and a crooked grin, half in jest, “Must be something spectacular.”’

“…At times,” Locus agrees, quietly, like he knows, admitting his thoughts perhaps a little too honestly, and Felix feels his cheeks warm at the fondness in his tone, the flustered sensation in his chest at the brush of Locus’ fingers over the back of his hand.

For once, he can’t find words, as he looks up, leaning back slightly when he finds Locus leaning just a little too close, his breath ghosting across his cheek, as Felix’s heart beats its hard and steady rhythm. When had he gotten so close? He hadn’t even made a sound. Isn’t he injured?

Or something…?

“What do you want, Felix?” Locus asks, watching him closely, as Felix tries not to stare too long at the specks of green hiding in the grey of his eyes.

“Generally?” he asks, with a nervous laugh, “Or…”

“…From this,” Locus specifies. This: this uncertain addition to their relationship, a factor Felix has never considered, not until after the explosion, where Locus probably saved his life, the burst of sudden colour in the aftermath of it, the past five days entertaining the thoughts as Locus recovered.

“I…” he stutters, finding it hard to concentrate with Locus leaning so close, flecks of green in his eyes, reminding him of what’s at stake, what could happen, if he lets it, if he wants to accept it, “I’m not sure.”

Locus waits, certain that he’ll find the words, waiting for Felix to say something specific, maybe, a key word, perhaps, or give permission. He doesn’t lean any closer, but he doesn’t move away. Felix isn’t quite sure what he wants for him to do more.

“But…” Felix continues, inching just a tad closer, “I think maybe, it wouldn’t hurt to try and see where it goes,” he decides, with an uncertain smile, unlike his usual toothy grins, “I already deal with you every day,” he decides, “What’s a little more?”

Locus doesn’t say anything, but he does give a small huff of amusement, the corner of his mouth twitching into a small but noticeable smile. Felix isn’t sure, but he thinks his shoulders settle back in something like relief, and Felix finds his own posture echoes it, with the positive response. Locus settles his hand onto Felix’s, comfortable enough with Felix’s words to move on from light and careful touch.

“What do _you_ want from this?” Felix asks, curious, aware, suddenly, that he’s still not sure what it is Locus is looking for, even though he knows, or can infer, that Locus wants this, at least a little - hasn’t been aggressively ignoring it over the years, after all.

Locus doesn’t answer. Deflects, instead, with another question, “…Would you like to see in full colour?” he murmurs, quietly, close enough for Felix to hear clearly.

“To start, yeah, that’d be nice,” Felix says, allows him to avoid answering, turning away to briefly glance at the greys and blacks that still dominate how he sees most of the room, “The contrast sometimes hurts my eyes,” he says, before he pauses, considering the words again, then turns to face Locus with his thoughts, “Wait, can that be–”

Locus doesn’t let him finish his question, pressing forward to capture his lips in an unexpected kiss. A light touch and chaste press that is surprising in how gentle it is, perhaps, only because of Felix’s preconceptions of how Locus is, as a person, primarily seen through the lens of conflict and war - consistently cold and precise and brutal he is in business, and yet none of that carries over into this

Locus kisses like he’s asking a question, the meaning of which Felix isn’t versed enough to parse out.

So he lets Locus lead, lets the action, the kiss carry him on.

It’s gentle, never ventures far enough to become heavy, or more, just enough to dare to hope for more, equal parts a request of Felix, and a suggestion of what Locus can offer.

Felix closes his eyes and answers by kissing back. He may as well enjoy it.

These kinds of kisses, well, he hasn’t had many in the past.

It’s nice.

Locus lets his lips linger, even after they’re done, and when he leans back and away, Felix opens his eyes and blinks…

…and he _sees_.

“What do you see?” Locus asks, as Felix hesitates, breath caught as greys begin to fade, blacks lighten, whites change shade.

He jerks back, suddenly, catching on the brief flit of concern across Locus’ features, before he turns his head to the side, gaze darting from corner to corner of the room, catching new bright hues and other subdued shades, leaking across his vision, blending together and separating contrasting shades to make old objects look new.

His hands itch for the pamphlet he dropped on the floor, with it’s silly explanations and colour legend on the back, so he can compare and put names to the new hues he can see.

He turns back to Locus, swallowing nervously, as he catalogues everything new in what he sees.

Locus is all subdued shades, and yet still he somehow manages to appear be the most colourful thing in the room.

Felix laughs, and the sound is breathless, “You,” he says, as his gaze darts up and down and around, trying to catch sight of all the colours he can see - faded lines in square patterns on the sheets, the lighter scars carving marks and shapes on Locus’ dark skin, the blooming mar of bruises and half-healed wounds scattered over his arm, peeking over his collar - returning, always, back up to the flecks of green in his eyes.

It’s early, still, but Felix might dare to say the green is his favourite colour.

“Take it slow, Felix,” Locus says, a steady rock in the sea of colourful change happening around him, as Felix’s gaze flits from one side of the room to the other, trying to catch all the tiny details between the hues.

It’s nothing less than a revelation. Did he really used to think it wouldn’t matter, that it wouldn’t make a difference? How different the world looks, from greys to splashes of colour. Even in the dark of evening there’s so much to see.

Felix laughs, “Slow?” he asks, turning to face him, “Locus, you know me,” he says, leaning forward with a grin.

He hasn’t seen himself yet, there’s no mirror in Locus’ room. But right now, he’s certain, of all the hues and shades in the room, the green is the nicest one yet.

Locus doesn’t move when he leans close, merely watches, still, nothing but the briefest of breaths, the slightest flick of his gaze down to his lips before it moves back up to meet Felix’s eyes again.

Felix presses his forehead to Locus’ own, just the slightest firm touch before he tilts his head as his grin fades to a smile.

“No fucking way,” he whispers, before he closes his eyes and presses his lips to Locus’ own.

There is a novelty to the world now, a vibrancy he’d never known could be this interesting, a previously undealt with potential for the relationship between Locus and himself, an uncertain stutter in his heart.

He’s not entirely sure what it means, what he wants, if it means anything, or if it’s just another stage of development, a change to get used to as time goes on. He can’t be sure where things will go.

But this, he decides, as Locus hums, grabs his collar, tugs him closer - this is a good way to start.

**Author's Note:**

> also on [tumblr](http://redqueenequilibrium.tumblr.com/post/127060868798/the-stain-of-your-eyes-the-tint-of-your-scars-pt)


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